Short Stories
fields like the prince in a fairy tale. Ah Chun did not remember
his father, a small farmer in a district not far from Canton; nor
did he remember much of his mother, who had died when he
was six. But he did remember his respected uncle, Ah Kow, for
him had he served as a slave from his sixth year to his twenty-
fourth. It was then that he escaped by contracting himself as a
coolie to labour for three years on the sugar plantations of Ha-
waii for fifty cents a day.
Ah Chun was observant. He perceived little details that not
one man in a thousand ever noticed. Three years he worked in
the field, at the end of which time he knew more about cane-
growing than the overseers or even the superintendent, while
the superintendent would have been astounded at the
knowledge the weazened little coolie possessed of the reduction
processes in the mill. But Ah Chun did not study only sugar pro-
cesses. He studied to find out how men came to be owners of
sugar mills and plantations. One judgment he achieved early,
namely, that men did not become rich from the labour of their
own hands. He knew, for he had laboured for a score of years
himself. The men who grew rich did so from the labour of the
hands of others. That man was richest who had the greatest
number of his fellow creatures toiling for him.
So, when his term of contract was up, Ah Chun invested his
savings in a small importing store, going into partnership with
one, Ah Yung. The firm ultimately became the great one of "Ah
Chun and Ah Yung," which handled anything from India silks
and ginseng to guano islands and blackbird brigs. In the mean-
time, Ah Chun hired out as cook. He was a good cook, and in
three years he was the highest-paid chef in Honolulu. His career
was assured, and he was a fool to abandon it, as Dantin, his
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